This is a time when we are see­ing a lot of sto­ries explor­ing unher­ald­ed female con­tri­bu­tions to sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, and the Mer­cury 13 sto­ry is one of the most inter­est­ing. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this telling does not pro­vide much of the dra­ma or human inter­est need­ed to bring an audi­ence along for the ride.

In the first place, the script is in the film or TV style: short scenes (often less than a minute long) with fre­quent loca­tion changes. The audi­ence there­fore has to wait through numer­ous scene changes. The actors do not seem to have put much work into char­ac­ter­i­za­tion or moti­va­tion, so many lines have the same deliv­ery regard­less of how angry, sad, or depressed their char­ac­ter might have been in the moment. There’s great mate­r­i­al here, and evi­dence of sig­nif­i­cant and lov­ing research into the sub­ject. To have been effec­tive, though, the pro­duc­tion need­ed more devel­op­ment and a stronger direc­to­r­i­al hand.

Venue 22 — MTYP Richard­son Hall

Play Dra­ma

60 Min­utes

Parental Guid­ance

Warn­ings: Mild language